My players have become fond of an NPC and are trying to train them up as a sort of member of the party.

So far I’ve been kinda fudging their stats, but I’d like to come up with something more concrete. I’ve got the D&D 5e book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, but unfortunately that’s a super slim set of rules that mostly focuses on “at this level, they get this specific ability”, so doesn’t provide a lot of help in translating to Pathfinder.

Does anyone know some good variant or homebrew rules for giving the party a Sidekick in PF2? Or alternatively, have any advice?

  • shnizmuffinEnglish
    2•6 months ago

    In PF1, you’d just slap NPC classes on them until they hit somewhere near the Average Party Level. When I ran PF1 games, the sidekick would start around APL, and then start gaining XP with the party on their way to their first level of a PC class. Ricky the Redeemed Bugbear War3/Bar1 type stuff.

    In D&D5E, specifically in TCE, it looks like they brought back a simplified version of NPC classes (Expert, Spellcaster, Warrior). I haven’t used these rules - all my players have adopted are magical beasts which scale differently.

    Both of these systems are doing the same thing:

    1. Nerf a player class
    2. apply that class until they have parity with the players in terms of HP/Level
    3. make sure they can’t outshine the actual PCs.

    IMO there’s nothing wrong with just building a PC and saying “Their level is the average party level minus 2” and don’t factor them into awarding XP or treasure gen.